The Woman He Loved Before (17 page)

‘I’m just glad he stopped before he’d killed or maimed someone in his—’

Grace’s cheeks almost explode with scarlet. She uncaps the bottle, dips her head, this time not moving her hair aside but instead using it as a veil to hide her face while she goes back to the manicure. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

‘It’s OK,’ I reply, and it is. The accident wasn’t Jack’s fault, despite what thoughts and doubts that policewoman had tried to plant in my head.

‘Did you ever meet Detective Sergeant Morgan?’ I ask Grace.

‘Her!
That … I hate to speak ill of the law, but she … She tried to get all sorts of information about Jack out of me. Trying to find out if he was violent, if he could have killed Eve. I soon put her straight. Even if he was violent, she went about it in such a ham-fisted way that if there was anything to tell – which there wasn’t – I would have kept it to myself.’ Grace pauses in painting and looks up at me. ‘Hang on, how do you know about her?’

‘She came to take my statement about the crash, but what she was really doing was trying to tell me that Jack murdered Eve and I was probably next on the list.’

‘I hope you told her where to go,’ Grace says, more outrage in her voice than shows on her face. There’s something in the way she drops eye contact while shaking her head at the audacity of the policewoman that unsettles me for a minute or two.

‘Of course,’ I reply, watching her not look at me.

‘She’s got some nerve, I’ll give her that.’

I can tell the conversation is over from the way Grace slips into silence as she works on my nails. Every stroke she paints onto my nails smoothes on a temporary coolness that shivers a pleasant thrill through me. I watch the brush, flattening out as it moves,
covering and protecting my nails from the colour that is to come. I suppose it must be awful to think of your friend being painted as a killer: it’s obviously not something she wants to talk about. I don’t want to, either, I’m more interested in Jack and the effect Eve had on him.

‘What were Jack’s relationships like before Eve?’ I eventually ask.

‘Before Eve? There was no before Eve, I thought you knew that.’ Grace is ready to move onto my right hand but pauses as she reaches for it over the table and stares at me. I return her gaze blankly. ‘You didn’t know?’

‘Know what?’ I ask.

She keeps her hand covering mine, as if she is about to deliver some terrible news. ‘Jack was a virgin when he got together with Eve.’

‘
I want to fuck you. Can I fuck you?
’ Jack says in my head. That memory often unspools in my mind: the carefully modulated demand in his voice; the way it mingled with his body pressing close to mine; the manner in which he phrased it to make sure he had full consent; his impeccable timing so I had already orgasmed and was more likely to comply … those were the actions of an expert. Not a—

‘You seriously didn’t know? I’m not being funny, but what do you and Jack talk about?’

‘All the wrong things, apparently. He was really a virgin before Eve?’

Her hair bobs forwards and back as she nods and I wish she would stop it. I wish she would stop having hair that moved. I wish she would stop having hair right in front of my face. ‘When Eve died and he started to get himself together, it seemed like all he lived for was to have sex with lots of different women. Before Eve, he wouldn’t, didn’t. He was waiting for the right woman to take that step with; he always said he had to be completely in love before he had sex.’

‘And that was with Eve,’ I state.

Grace moves her slender shoulders up and down. ‘I guess so. She wasn’t a virgin. She was like the rest of us, had at least one notch on her belt. I think it’s all his father’s fault.’

What does Hector have to do with anything?

‘Have you decided on a colour yet?’ Grace asks, fanning her fingers over the pots she has carefully set out on the table.

‘Red,’ I say absently. My mind is still trying to process this new information about Jack. Was that why he was obsessed with her? Most of us still have a soft spot for our first love, and for the first person we … For Jack that person had been one and the same and he married her. No wonder he couldn’t let her go completely.

‘Why would it be Hector’s fault that Jack was a virgin till Eve?’

Grace stops looking over her colour collection, instead her eyes examine me with surprise and incredulity. ‘You two really don’t talk much, do you?’ she says.

You have no idea
, I think at her. ‘Not about stuff like this,’ I admit.

‘Well, I probably shouldn’t tell you, but I can’t see what harm it’ll do since it was such a long time ago. But when Jack turned fifteen, on his actual birthday, his father took him to an upmarket brothel in London and told him to pick a girl.’

‘That’s
horrible
,’ I whisper, once the initial shock has allowed me to speak.

‘It gets worse. When Jack couldn’t because he was too scared and pretty freaked out, Hector angrily told him off for humiliating him and then wouldn’t speak to Jack for a week.’

My hand flies up to my mouth.

‘Oh, I know,’ Grace says. ‘Can you imagine what it’s like for me? I’ve known Hector my whole life, and to find out something like that. It made my skin crawl then and it makes my skin crawl now. He and my father are really good friends so obviously that set me wondering … which made me freak out, so I had to stop thinking about it.’

‘God, you poor things.’

‘It really messed with Jack’s head. While I can never be certain that my father did anything like that, Jack had proof that his father cheated on his mother. He had to decide whether to keep quiet or risk destroying his family by telling Harriet. All of that on the shoulders of a fifteen-year-old. It’s no wonder he didn’t want to go near a woman until it was right.’

‘I had no idea.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t, would you? No one looks at a man like Hector and thinks he … Anyway, Jack staying a virgin was also the perfect revenge on his father because it became this big thing in Hector’s social and business circles that he had this good looking son who wouldn’t “act like a man”, whatever that is. Hector was always making dates for Jack and introducing him to women, but Jack wouldn’t play along. He had the last laugh on that score.’

‘I danced with Hector at our wedding.’
He had his arms around me at our wedding.
I’m trying not to think of all the times I had physical contact with Hector but failing, and that’s the main one that keeps coming to mind.

‘He insisted on dancing with me at my eighteenth party and at my wedding, which was just blergh! Eve was the smart one with them semi-eloping, eh? She got to avoid all that.’

‘Hmmm,’ I reply, my mind reeling. The first time I met Hector I actually liked him better than I liked Harriet. I thought Harriet was a bit odd, a bit over the top with how happy she was that Jack had fallen in love again and with how cool she was about being involved or not in the wedding arrangements, when clearly she wanted nothing more than to be involved. Hector was polite and friendly and affable, and he’d come across as the sort of person you’d want Jack to grow into. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

‘OK, now, back to your nails. Which colour?’

‘I told you, red.’

‘Red? I have fifteen different reds – you’re going to have to be more specific than that.’

‘I don’t know, Grace, I’m not functioning on full power. I can’t
even decide whether to wear a bra or not most days and that’s kind of essential – this is not. So I’m sorry, I can’t decide between the different shades of red. I don’t care.’

‘You don’t care? You wash your mouth out, young lady. I’m not letting a little accident rob you of your beauty duties,’ she says sharply. ‘Angela and I are going to get you back to your old self in no time.’

‘You’ve talked to Angela about me?’

‘Of course!’ she says. ‘You’re our friend: we’re going to do whatever it takes to get you well.’

‘I am well.’

Grace’s eyes, a light blue with hazel flecks, fix on me and force me to stare back at her. ‘You know what we mean.’

I immediately drop my gaze. I know what they mean. I thought I was getting better, but Jack’s dreams and the policewoman’s visit have knocked me back a bit. Or maybe it was a natural comedown, something that would have happened when the reality of my situation fully hit home. I feel so frustrated. I want to grab myself by my shoulders and scream at myself to snap out of it, to stop what I’m doing, what I’m feeling, to
pull myself together
. But I would be shouting at a woman deafened by the horror of what she sees in the mirror, defeated by the fear that the reflection will always be the same, petrified by the knowledge that something like this could have laid her so low. I want to be well, but I cannot see how at the moment.

I reach down, my hand aiming for a nail polish pot. I pick up a dark red. Dark red, like the colour of my scars when they were two days old and I saw them for the first time. ‘This one,’ I say, holding it out to her as a peace offering, a white flag of surrender so she will leave me alone.

Her cheeks dimple with the smile that moves across her face. Her eyes, as insightful and probing as Angela’s, tell me quite clearly they are not fooled. But she’ll accept my symbol, for now.

libby

‘I’m sure I speak for us all,’ Hector says, holding forth from his place by the fireplace, ‘when I say that we’re extremely happy that both Liberty and Jack are here with us today.’

Around the room, our gathered friends and family nod and murmur in agreement. Everyone is here: Mum, Dad, Grace, Rupert, Angela, Angela’s husband Spencer, Paloma, Sandra, Inês, Amy and Vera, Grace’s parents, Harriet and, of course, Hector. A few people from Jack’s office are also here, as is Rachel, Jack’s assistant. Caleb and Benji are still on holiday, as is Jeff, Jack’s brother, and his family. I sit on the sofa opposite the fireplace, holding onto Jack’s hand as he sits beside me.

‘I’m sure you’re all as relieved as I am that they’re both on the mend,’ Hector continues.

For some reason, he has appointed himself the one to do this, to be the leader and to make a speech. In the past, this would not have bothered me but, knowing what I know, I feel a little sullied by it all, as if he is infecting us with the filthiness and shame of his actions. Which is ridiculous, I know, because until it was brought up I had no need to be disgusted with Hector. He was simply Jack’s father who was no less or more likeable a person than many of the other people I have met since I became involved with Jack.

‘I hope you will join me in raising a toast to Liberty and Jack, and to the wonderful life they have ahead of them,’ Hector ends.

‘To Libby and Jack,’ most of the people in the room chorus, apart from Jack and me. He squeezes my hand in reassurance and I lean into him in reply. We both wear painted on smiles for everyone here. This is all a bit too formal for both of us. When Harriet and Hector suggested a small gathering so that people could all see us in one go and so that we wouldn’t be plagued by a stream of visitors, I’d envisaged them and Mum and Dad, maybe Jeff and his family. I hadn’t realised they meant all these people, and I hadn’t realised they intended to get so much food made and sent over. It was all very not us.

I’d felt awful when I realised yesterday that this was what was happening, because I knew Mum and Dad would have liked to have been involved, and also because it meant facing more people than just close family looking the way I looked. The sentiment was lovely, and their hearts were in the right place, but I’d have preferred a tiny gathering of only our nearest and dearest.

I have a scarf around my head but it is too soon for make-up, so have had to brave people looking like I do. I’d kind of hoped to blend into the background, to sit in a corner, with my face partially hidden and let Jack get on with it. Hector has put paid to that. He’s drawn attention to me. The problem is, of course, that he can now do no right in my eyes.

Thankfully, people seem to be entertaining themselves, many of those who don’t know me well are keeping their distance and only look at me when they think they can get away with it. Which, in the grand scheme of things, when the alternative is having to carry on a conversation where they’re trying not to stare at my scar, is the best option.

‘Liberty,’ Mum says, with a serious tone, sitting herself down next to me when Jack gets up to refill our glasses. I know she’s either going to try to get me to go to see her pastor about praying over my scars to heal them quicker or, worse, she’s going to say, ‘Why don’t we go shopping in London this week for wigs?’

My heart and body sink. ‘Mum—’ I begin.

‘Mrs Rabvena,’ Angela says, suddenly appearing from nowhere, ‘I was thinking of asking you about the church you go to in London.’ She sits down on the other side of my mother, ready to throw herself into the line of fire for me. That’s why she is my best friend. ‘Can anyone go, and do they do the special all-day services for Easter and Christmas?’

Mum is torn for about thirty seconds between persuading me to go along with her plan to make me look like a woman again, and finding another convert for her church. They are probably thirty of the longest seconds of her life but in the end she chooses God over harassing me.